Dave H.
Google
I’ve been to Brunch here a few times before. I stopped going as it used to be much larger until a few years ago when they reduced the size, after which, it just didn’t have the same wow factor as before. Having read a recent review in TimeOut which said it was back to its former glory, I decided to give it another go.
The greeting at the entrance was friendly and a drink was offered but no description of its contents was given - it turned out to be something made with what tasted like grapefruit juice - unfortunately this has an adverse effect on the medicine I have to take. Of course, as I hadn’t been told what it was, I didn’t know that until I began to drink it.
I was seated outside with my wife on a table for two, just outside the entrance to one of the restaurants and just around the corner from the Bbq stations. This resulted in a bit of dodging and weaving with the other guests when leaving and returning to the table as they went to and from the inside food stations. The other problem was the breeze, which regularly took the smoke from the Bbq station and threw it all over us. We left with smelly hair and clothes.
Previous visits would see our fizz glasses topped up in a blink of an eye - we used to tell our friends how good the service was - your glass was never left empty. This visit, we almost had to fight to keep the glass on the table as they were so keen to remove the empty glass rather than refill it. To get a refill we had to vie for a servers attention and then wait whilst the server either asked another server to refill our glass or on the odd occasion, the asked server would refill it themselves. This got better as the Brunch went on, and with an hour to go, the glass would be refilled without us having to ask.
One thing I did notice which I hadn’t on previous visits, was the servers were now joining the guests at the cocktail drink stations in order to get cocktails for those who couldn’t be bothered to get up. Fizz was always table served, and cocktails were always collected from the stations by the guests. Maybe, this was the reason for the much slower fizz refills.
One last criticism, seen but not experienced, was the cocktail portions. Depending on who served you at the station, you sometimes were given half a glass instead of a full glass of the cocktails. One young lady in front of me at the cocktail station had to ask for hers to be topped up - the server didn’t seem particularly pleased that she did and replied with “this is how I always do them” he then proceeded to top her glass up with crushed ice rather than more of the cocktail!
The food was up to its usual high standard though the variety didn’t seem to be as great as previous visits.
Not sure why TimeOut awarded this their award for 2024 as our previous brunch visit to Bubalicous was as good food wise with more variety, and much better drink wise.
Four stars given for the food due to the reduction in variety; three for the service which was quite slow and three for the atmosphere as this was ruined by being seated immediately adjacent to a busy entrance, and being swamped by smoke.